race

Lane 1: Petr Mitas, representing NED but a Czech, De Laak – yes the same guy that beat me at the Czech Open Masters

Lane 2: me, representing CZE, but a Dutchman

Lane 3: GER Michael Helbig

Lane 4: ITA Massimo Patea

Frank Arnold from Germany had withdrawn.

So this bunch was the four youngest participants in the C category. At Euromasters, the singles categories race as follows. Each winner of a heat gets a medal and proceeds to the final. If there are fewer than six heats, the next fastest times qualify for a final as well. If a rower qualifies in more than one age category, he will row the final in his age category, and for the other age category the next fastest time will be selected, so there was an incentive to row fast whatever your position in the field. The finals (one for each age category) for the “Munich Trophy” would be rowed on Sunday morning, before the Mixed events, and the winner would get the Munich Trophy. The nrs 2 and 3 in the final would get a medal.

After my usual warming up routine I found myself at the pre-start with Petr and the rest of the field. Petr and I started chatting (and got reprimanded for being too noisy). Then it was time to row.

Ready

Attention

(I almost shot out of the starting pontoon now but managed to control myself, while the starter was grabbing his flag)

Red flag went up

GO! Red flag down. We were off. Here is a picture of Petr (the guy in blue in the background) and myself doing our first stroke.

Ready – Attention – Go!

Despite the almost false start, my real start was an excellent one. By the 5th stroke I was leading by a length, with Petr in second position.

I managed to stay ahead of Petr in the first 250m, but the distance between us became smaller with every stroke. With 750m to go he passed me. Given my previous race experience with this guy, I decided to stick to my race plan and race for time, as well as defend the second place.

SpeedCoach graph (exported through FIT file to Strava to Rowsandall.com) – not sure whether the wavy splits are a SpeedCoach FIT export artefact or a real thing. Here is a quick plot that I made from the CSV export:

It shows better how the race evolved. I started very fast and then gradually dropped to my race pace as Petr was passing me. The 4.4 m/s of the second half of the race corresponds to a 1:53 pace. I pretty much rowed this out in a flat pace, keeping an eye on the German guy. While rowing in front of the grandstand (which is a full 250m long), I noticed a few 1:58 splits on the SpeedCoach, which motivated me to try and speed up a bit. In the end I was just 4 seconds behind Petr.

Also in the overall ranking I didn’t do bad. I had the 7th time overall, out of 38 participants. I was the fastest guy not qualifying for the finals for the Munich Trophy. 🙁

As this was all my racing for the day, I had the afternoon free to enjoy watching Romana racing, browsing through the merchandise, have a beer, and chat with various people.

In the evening I did a quick training in an ad hoc quad that we registered on Thursday afternoon. With the high price for late registration, we counted that we would pay 1,50 EURO for each stroke during the race, and although we were age category C they would only let us start in the A category. Still it was attractive enough and the race was on Saturday after my B singles race, so no clashes with high priority races.

Then Romana and I cycled to Dachau. We had an excellent Italian dinner at Mamma Rosa, a very nice place, and then went to our hotel.

So I ended the Saturday blog by saying that Kazi and I took the double for a quick row and we were flying. Rowing Nirvana. The right stroke. The right rhythm. Microsecond timing precision.

It was noticed. And we were proclaimed the favourites for this Masters C 2x race, by all our friends. Talk about putting on the pressure.

I wasn’t so sure. We were up against an unknown Polish boat. I saw them row the mixed quad on Saturday and was impressed. They rowed effortlessly, and won by a very big margin. One of the guys was just a second slower than me in the single. Also, I had very strong suspicions that this is the Polish mixed quad that beat us in Hazewinkel. Checking this now and confirmed. It’s the same guys. See here. So the men from that mixed quad would be rowing against us.

The only problem was that they didn’t show up at the start. The umpires called them. We waited 5 minutes for them. Then the umpires decided that it was too late and we were started off, only three boats.

Our rowing was far from the Nirvana experience of the previous evening. We were in front, of course, but struggling to keep Olomouc (Polasek/Brazda) behind us. They kept doing pushes to come next to us. In vain. A 10 stroke push at the 500m got some light between the boats and we rowed the final 500m in relative comfort.

Won. A gold medal! And looking at the results, our time was not half bad. Wait, what are those Polish guys Szczepaniak and Bednarek doing among the B rowers (race 1403)? We asked them after the race. The explanation was simple. They hadn’t attended the representatives meeting and were unaware that our race was moved to an hour earlier. They found out 10 minutes before the scheduled start and came late. They went to the race organization to ask and were allowed to row in the B race. They won with a big margin in a time that is comparable to ours.

Mix Double

Talking about pressure, the pressure on us for the double was nothing compared with the pressure we felt for the Mix 2x. Romana and I were the defending champions. Most of the doubles competing in this race are couples, which means that this is a race that is discussed long after the event.

Although we were the defending champions, we were not the favorites. Petr Mitas with his doubles partner Jitka Masatova were. He’s the muscular guy who beat me by 9 seconds in the single. She is a fitness trainer from Prague. Other strong participants were the Cernak’s from Ostrava (husband and wife) and Pardubice/Olomouc (which will soon be Olomouc proper, because Karel will move and he will live together with his beloved Vendula in Olomouc). Romana’s double partner Slavka with her younger doubles partner (but only that, not a couple) were strong outsiders, and on a good day even Neratovice could go fast (not sure about any relationship between Mr Tockstein and Mrs Chovanakova).

We were quick out of the start and executed our race strategy of a very strong opening 15 strokes.That brought us in second position. The good news was that we were not far behind Mitas/Masatova. The bad news was that Karel and Vendula were on our heels.

Still we rated down a bit and tried to save some energy for what we expected would be a very tough second half of the race. With 500m to go I didn’t like how close Karel and Vendula came so I called for a 15 stroke push. This push had an interesting result. Not only did we row away from Karel/Vendula as if they were standing still (and we probably broke them at that point), also did this push bring us in the leading position, a few cm in front of Mitas/Masatova. We didn’t know that at that time, but spectators told us.

Mitas and Masatova stepped on the gas and soon they were in front of us. I didn’t dare to look too often. We were rowing in lane 2, with Mitas and Masatova over in lane 6. Passing the club house I took up the stroke rate a little bit and with 200m to go I really started to push. Unfortunately, also exhaustion started to play a role …

We finished second. A bit more than a boat length behind the winners. But Petr told me later that we scared the hell out of them and he had rowed the second 500m full out to stay ahead of us.

No heart rate data

This graph shows nicely our big push that helped us row away from Karel and Vendula. Same push brought us back close to the winners

I am also happy that we had a faster time than any of the rowers in the second C race, with all the international participants.

Masters B eight

After the mixed 2x, I spent about 30 minutes lying in our event shelter tent, and then it was time to launch the eight. You can imagine I was pretty tired by now, but this was our revenge race against Blesk of Prague. See this blog post.

In Radek, my “other double partner”, we had a newbie cox. We told him to just keep talking to us. Count. Give information about the other crews. We had a detailed race plan which involved a push around the “water slide” (before the 500m mark) and a “strong last minute”.

We also had the determination to not let Blesk pass us.

Eight races are very emotional events. Fourty eight people lined up at the start. Lots of adrenaline. Big boats that take a while to get up to speed, so the start seems to happen in slow motion. High stroke rates. And, with masters rowing, lots of water splashing about.

Hysterical coxes.

Side wind.

Anyway, we were out of the start well and the first part of our plan worked. At 700m to go, we were half a length in front of Blesk. The bad news was that there was another boat in front of us. And more bad news. The half length lead was shrinking.

We did our push which we executed very well.

I had no tired feeling. All of us were just rowing in a trance.

We managed to increase the lead slightly.

Then it was just a struggle to stay ahead of them. We managed and I got another silver medal.

Overall, this was a super weekend. Four silver medals and one gold, out of five races.

After lunch, Romana and I took off to Třeboň. The weather forecast was 15-20 degrees with wind and rainshowers, so we had all the rowing/racing gear in our bags: Long sleeves, long legs uni, short sleeves, regular uni. Sweaters. Caps. Suncream as well as umbrellas. Two bikes on the back of the car, and wing riggers in the back. We arrived in Třeboň after a 2.5 hour drive which passed without major incidents. Checked in to the hotel and drove to the rowing club/lake/regatta venue to claim rack space for our club’s boats.

We arrived there about 10 minutes after our trailer. We just saw the trailer driver speeding off in his car. He is not a Masters rower, so I just drove the trailer, parked it, and left. So it was up to Romana and myself to claim rack space and a space for our event shelter tent. We had a choice between selfishly just taking care of my single and our double, or try to unload the fours and eights, pairs and doubles, as well as set up the tent. We took a middle road, first claiming our own rack space, then trying to claim a few places with piles of oars and sculls. Then we towed our very heavy tent to the last suitable sport for event tents, and tried to set it up. By then we were helped by Petr “Bulda” Novotny and Romana’s doubles partner Slavka.

It was about 13 degrees and windy and the lake didn’t really look inviting. Also, it was getting late, and we had to drive to the local camping to make arrangements for our club’s training camp in August. So in the end we decided to skip the training and just head back to the hotel after all the chores were done.

Trebon situation with training pattern, dominant wind direction and a few landmarks.

Saturday

At 8, we were present at the club representatives meeting. No big changes, except that my doubles race on Sunday was moved to an hour earlier, because some rowers competed both in the Masters C Double and in the Masters D 8+. I noted the change, and that was that.

Before, during and after the meeting there was a lot of hand shaking, nodding, and small talk. For Masters rowers in the Czech Republic, this is the annual event, and it is as much a social event as a championship event. And this year was even better, with a big participation from Austria, Poland, Slovenia, and a few rowers from Germany. The Czech Masters scene, completed with 60 crews from abroad may make this the biggest Masters event in Europe after Euromasters and Masters Worlds. So there was a lot of catching up to do, especially with rowers from Prague and Bohemia, who row their regional races and I don’t meet them very often.

The races are run like most Masters races, i.e. if there are more than 6 rowers in one category, several “finals” are rowed, and medals are handed out for each “final”. Gold medals for a first place, and silver and bronze only if there are 4 or more competitors in the same age category in the same race. Sometimes races are combined for different age categories because of a lack of competitors, so the race can have several “winners” (one for each age category). That is nice, because you have a higher chance of racing in a full field, but can be slightly confusing because you have to remember which lane numbers you are competing with.

After that, it was time to retreat to the tent and concentrate on my first race of the day. The Masters C single. In the mean time, Romana rowed her first race, coming second in the mixed eight, D category, finishing second out of three D boats.

Then it was time for me to do my warming up and row to the start in the single. I was quite nervous for this race. There was a nasty side wind and I rowed in a heavy field, with Mr Mitas who beat me by 9 seconds (probably easily) a year ago, and Mr Nedoba (“Kazi”) who is back after a year of absence and has always beaten me on the Nationals (but I have beaten him twice this year, once in his home regatta and once on the Slovak Nationals).

The alignment at the start was a tricky thing as there are no stake boats and there was a strong side wind. You have to start lining up in the buoys to your right, and hope that the lining up goes fast enough that you only drift to the middle of your lane. I used my tactics of being slightly behind all the others. When you succeed in that, you are the guy who is moving in the right direction and when they start fast (because of the wind), you have a slight advantage of a slightly lighter first stroke and achieving a slightly higher end speed. The tactics succeeded very well this time.

I started off well and was leading the pack, with Kazi less than half a boat length behind me, and Petr Mitas, who was caught by surprise by the fast starting commands, half a boat behind.

The leading position didn’t last long. Petr rowed right through me in the first 150m and took over the lead. Kazi was still half a length behind. During the first 500m I managed to make that a full length. There were a few very strong wind gusts around the water slide (see map above) and some nasty chop from an umpire launch right at the 500m point. I rowed through them slightly better than Kazi and he started to fall behind.

There was no point in trying to catch Petr Mitas. I will show you why. Here’s a snapshot I took from the grandstand during one of the other races (Masters D 8+). Mitas is the smiling giant body builder who is waving at me. The grey haired guy next to him is Mr Polasek, another fast rower from my region,who beat me in Hodonin. The bald guy with the blue uni is Kazi.

So with 400m to go I was in second position. I was rowing away from Kazi but sprinting to catch up with Petr Mitas was pointless. He would just accelerate slightly. I also had to row another race that day (the quad), so I just rowed to defend my position. That still required rowing pretty fast, because I didn’t want Kazi to come any closer, in case I would catch a crab or hit a buoy.

So I got silver. Overall I am not so happy with the rowing. It was erratic in places, but I guess the side wind is the reason. It was a gusty wind, which catches you by surprise, and I had to work hard to not be blown into the buoys.

I wore a HR belt during this race and exported the data directly to TrainingPeaks from CrewNerd, after which Tapiriik.com took care of syncing with Strava and SportTracks.

The two plots are made from the same data set, but one was imported from Strava while the other was imported from SportTracks. I will stick to importing the data from SportTracks. It seems that Strava is doing something “smart” which leads to the funny pace peak directly after the start. Here are the full results for the two “C” races.

Two races after my singles race, Romana rowed a combined B/C/E/D race in the four (4-). She won a gold medal for showing up at the start in this race with one boat from each age category. 🙂

Just before my quad race, a few hours later, Romana came second in the Women’s D 8+. No medal for her, because there were only two D boats in a combined D/F race. I stroked our quad. This one was even more difficult to align at the start and we only succeeded with the second attempt. I wasn’t sure at all what to expect here. I have proclaimed before that we have a slow quad this year. The race was very hard work. The guys behind me were not completely in sync, which drives a stroke to row a too high SPM with a wrong rhythm. Exactly that happened, which means that you cannot take that fraction of a second rest during the recovery and the whole 1k becomes a cramped affair. I didn’t wear the HR belt during this row, but I am sure my heart rate was very high. We did a successful 10 stroke push to defend against Blesk who were closing in on us. Then our bowman called for our “legendary strong last minute”, but I didn’t have the energy to raise the stroke rate. By that time I was so exhausted that I had difficulty with steering. I managed to stay away of the buoys, but there were a few zig zags around the center line of the lane.

We started at >40spm, rowed 38spm for 200m, then dropped to 35-36spm at cruising speed. We were beaten by an “A” crew in lane one and by Neratovice, who also beat us a year ago:

Masters A/B combined race. The “A” boat just had to show up to get a gold. We got a silver with a slow time.

That was the Saturday for me, but Romana wasn’t done yet. She was doing a 4 race Saturday. I moved to the grandstand and arrived in time for her race in the double. Together with her bow girl Slavka from Breclav, they won a race with four C doubles, beating the silver crew by 10 seconds. Lucky number 13.

And here are some pictures from our club’s team competing in the “giga eight” category. Not sure what the English word is for this historical boat type. Clinker eight? You may wonder what the kid is doing in this crew. For this category, the minimum age of 27 years was dropped. Only the average age of the crew decides the category:

After the races ended, Kazi and I took my double for a quick 4km of testing. In Hodonin, we had been rowing a Hodonin club boat. My double is newer (that’s unimportant) and better rigged (that is important). So we had to do a few km to make sure we had Kazi’s footstretcher in the right position. We did a few race starts and a few race pace pieces. Just a few strokes, but we were flying!

We ended the day with a restaurant dinner and a brief visit to the local brewery where we met many of the other competitors.

Heats day of the Morava races, which are regional races. These races are quite important as they are qualifying races for the National Championships for the 11 to 18 year olds. The races are being held on our lake, so no transport needed this time.

We headed for the lake in the morning. As we were going to sleep at the club and stay for the whole weekend, it took some time to get everything in and on the car, including two bicycles and a lot of food.

I spent the morning preparing my blades for a paint job. There is the new pair of sculls which must be in club colors before the Masters Nationals. Also, one of my old pairs were painted in a rush. By yours truly, I have to confess. I didn’t sand and clean them throroughly before painting, with the result that that paint gradually begins to peel off. This time I was prepared to do the job thoroughly. So I spent more than an hour getting the old paint off those blades, then sanding and cleaning them. Then I discovered that the club was out of the blue paint so I had to hop on the bike to get some new paint. I am happy to report that at the end of the afternoon I had two pairs of nicely painted blades. The only thing is that the paint slightly darkens when it ages, so my third pair is a slightly darker tint. It is either the darkening effect, or the fact that our club is not entirely sure about the right shade of blue that is our club colors.

We do have it specified, mind you, but in a pre-WWII paint numbering standard which is not used any more, and nobody is able to convert it for us. So RAL 5015 it shall be for me.

By then it was time to fire on the barbecue. The girls were out in a quad and I wanted to go for a short row in the single, but my blades were drying and I was responsible for providing dinner.

After dinner, we made a camp fire and had a good time sitting around the fire and chatting. I had no heats, but the kids had done well. My son Dominik had managed to get into the A final on the single (which meant he was qualified for the Nationals) and daughter Lenka and her double partner Iva had done the same in the double.

At 10:30pm it was time for the fireworks.

There is this fireworks contest in Brno. It’s held every year in June and the fireworks are done from a big pontoon in the middle of the lake. From the dock of our rowing club you have the best view of the show.

So we tuned the radio to the station that broadcasted the music to the fireworks show and watched. This year it was really great.

Sunday

Woke up to the sound of birds singing. Breakfast at the rowing club. In the morning I spent some time doing work, but then it was time to get ready for action.

My first race would be at 15:18, so around 1pm I hopped on the bike and cycled around the lake to the Lodni Sporty rowing club for the weigh in. I made 72.2kg with shoes on so no problem there.

The problem was that there were only four LW 1x rowers in that final. Three of them aged 18 to 25 and fast scullers. And me. From our club there was Lubos, who I have occasionally been a sparring partner to, who is trying to get to the U23 Worlds in Rotterdam in the LW2x. Then two guys from Breclav, a Mr Susky who has aspirations as well, and a Mr Rampula, who is unpredictable but can be fast.

Trying to relax before the race, I decided to take it as a time trial and just row a good time. During the day, the light tailwind had turned into a light headwind, so I wasn’t sure what to aim for. Kleshnev predicts a 7:40 2k in neutral weather based on my erg results, but I take that as the ultimate achievable, not as the mean for 7:40 scullers. Based on recent trainings, I thought that under 8 minutes would be a good target. Actually, I have never rowed under 8 minutes on this lake.

In hindsight, I think that the most important decision was to take it as a time trial and ignore the other rowers.

Arrived at the start. Light headwind, still. Set CrewNerd to 2000m and Auto-Start and prepared.

I started off well, but of course started to fall behind the young guys already in the first 500m. But I kept going at 30spm, trying to focus on technique, and getting over the waves as well as possible. When I say waves, I am not talking about chop. I am talking about long standing waves caused by the boat traffic on the lake. These waves really have the ability to throw your balance off, so it is important to stay relaxed and react to the movements of the boat.

By the 1k mark I was rowing about 3 lengths behind the number three, Mr Rampula. I was hoping that Lubos was taking over the lead from Mr Susky by then but I didn’t know. Three singles lengths behind. That didn’t really bothered me, because I noticed on CrewNerd that I was rowing under a 2:00 pace per 500m and I knew the first 500m had been really fast.

The third 500m wasn’t the best. I saw a couple of strokes at a 2:06 pace, but I managed to get back to 2:02 and lower. Then, with 600m to go, I noticed that I was closer to Mr Rampula than I thought. I rated up slightly and started to chase him.

Probably Rampula had gone out too fast, wanting to play with the big boys, and was now paying for it. Anyway, I gradually managed to close the gap and with 250m to go I was half a length behind him.

By now I was really in problems. I was breathing very heavily. Counting strokes. But the fact that I was on Rampula’s tail kept me going.

He managed to stay in front of me. I passed the finish and collapsed, just barely noticing that CrewNerd was still counting down and only stopped 20 m after the real finish line. I guess that’s the problem with GPS measured distances.

CrewNerd stopped counting at 8:06 but I hung around in the finish area and listened to the announced official times. I had managed 7:59.06 and I was very happy with that. Actually made a proud fist punch gesture to celebrate. That must have seemed strange from the grandstands. Comes in last. Is happy. 🙂

And here is how I suffered to achieve this. I am not 100% sure about the immedate jump to “red” heart rate values after the start. The data seem to have a strange plateau there. Need to look into that. Otherwise, though, the picture is true.

After that, I had about 2 hours to recover and get ready for the eight. Of course that wasn’t to be. And worse, there were more rowers in our Masters eight who had done one or two races before that day, so we ended up in third place, beaten by our Elite crew and by a mix of Juniors/Masters/Elite from Lodni Sporty. We managed to leave our club’s historical eight behind us. 🙂

And here are the pictures …

Lenka and Iva in the doubleBoys fourThe Boys trainers on a launchBoys doubleTailwind changed into headwind. Some of us changed gearNumber one!Our head coach sending a pair to the startThe Author going to the startThe Author almost ready to row to the startThe Author’s son rowing to his startThe Author’s son rowing to his startThe Author on #2 seatAn artistic picture of our eightAfter the raceGroup picture of the three eights of our club

Lenka and Dominik did well in their respective races. Lenka was third in the double and Dominik came in fifth in the single. Both in the A final.

The races ended, it was time to enjoy our club house’s brand new beer tap:

Primátorky races. Eights and singles in the heart of Prague, on the Moldau river. The culmination of the season for many Czech Masters teams.

As you have been able to read here, also the Masters men of CVK Brno put in a few trainings on the eight, to defend their series of 4 subsequent wins on this race. Last year I didn’t take part because of back issues, but this year I would be rowing on 2 seat.

We left Brno on Saturday morning. A comfortable 2.5 hour train ride brought us to Prague. The race would only be at 7pm, so time enough for a nice lunch with Romana and some race watching.

Spectators on the Moldau bank near the finish line. Prague Castle in the background

View from the grandstand towards the famous “Railway Bridge”

After watching a few races from the grandstand, I moved to the Railway Bridge to take pictures of our Men’s Eight (the young men) in their heat.

View of the finish area from the Railway Bridge

Prague is a great place to race. Here is the first men’s eight heat approaching the railway bridge.

The Brno Men:

After the men rowed their heats and the repechage, the Wintech eight was ours for our Men’s Masters B final. We had time enough to launch early and used that time to sharpen our skills. After all, we hadn’t had so many trainings together. We rowed a good 7 km with 10 stroke pieces at different stroke rates and a few practice starts.

We were ready to roll and it was time for our start. Four boats started to align at the 1000m mark.

Lane 1: Brno (that’s us)

Lane 2: Piestany (they came all the way from Slovakia)

Lane 3: Neratovice

Lane 4: Blesk

A year ago our boat beat blesk by a tiny margin.

While we were aligning for the start, this guy came steaming up the river from the finish:

Right next to us, at the start line, it started to turn.

It turned. Then its engines roared as it started to make speed to return to the finish. Right next to us. The bowman and I were trying to keep our boat in the right direction.

Suddenly I noticed that the other boats had started. We did a panicky improvised start and started chasing them, right through the wake of that big river boat. The water seemed to have reached the boiling point. Whirls everywhere, waves, and the roaring sound of a fifty year old diesel engine.

After about 10 strokes our cox had to pull sharply to the left to avoid bumping into the giant. A few strokes later we started clashing blades with Piestany, but we quickly rowed through them. Adrenalin fountains were spouting from our ears. Stunned tourists on the deck of the river steamer saw us steam past them. Our stroke rate was 39 spm.

Two hundred meters into the race Blesk’s lead had shrunk from a boat and a half to a boat length. Our cox was shouting orders and we were reducing the gap by every stroke. They rowed over on the other side of the river and I was just focusing being in sync with our stroke, who was doing a fiery 37spm.

In that part of the race I was confident. We were rowing into Blesk so fast that I estimated we would be next to them by the time we rowed under the railway bridge, and then would be able to pass them in the final 300m.

By the railway bridge I had them in my peripheral vision. Thirty strokes to go. We were over 40spm by now and we were still moving but not as fast as I liked. That was clearly the feeling in our entire crew because everybody started to pull harder and harder. The problem was that everybody was pulling for himself and as we hit an area with very bad water because of the concrete banks, we started to lose balance and hit a few bad strokes, which cost us the win.

Immediately after the finish our stroke and our cox raised their arms and summoned the marshalls to listen to our complaint. At first he thought we were complaining about the clashing blades, but when we explained him the situation at the start, he started to understand. He acknowledged that conditions at the start had been far from ideal and even proceeded to say that the should have stopped the race after a few strokes.

His launch disappeared to the bank to discuss with the finish line officials. The Blesk boat and us were waiting impatiently.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, they finally seemed to have a verdict. The marshall’s boat came to the Blesk boat and started talking to them. We couldn’t hear what they were saying but it was clear that Blesk wasn’t pleased. Then the Marshall communicated the verdict to the speaker, who announced:

“The Masters B is declared undecided because of unfair conditions for Brno at the start. The two first boats will re-row the race at 19:40 to decide the winner. If one of the boats, or both, do not show at 19:40, they will be automatically put in last place in the results.”

After this announcement, Blesk rowed away proclaiming that they wouldn’t re-row. Our boat needed another five minutes to calm down. At that moment, I was ready to row to the start and race again, but some of us were fiercely against it.

All was decided when our stroke got cramp in his legs. We returned to the Blesk rowing club, only 7 rowers rowing, stroke seat bent over his oar and holding his leg.

At Blesk we went to see the Blesk crew to explain our point of view. Apparently they had calmed down as well, because they invited us with a big smile, exclaiming: “What did you think complaining against a crew from the organizing club?”

We explained that they rowed well and were not to blame, but that the conditions at our start were clearly unfair. Anyway, there wouldn’t be a re-row. One 1000m row was clearly more than enough for some of us (and some of them as well).

Our times of 2:54 and 2:54.4 were the two fastest of all the Masters races by more than five seconds.

HR and pace plot of the warming up row and race. No stroke rate data because I didn’t take the phone on board.

So of course I am disappointed by the result. On the one hand, I am sad we didn’t do a re-row. That would have been a nice story and a nice thing to do for the spectators, whoever would win it. On the other hand, I must acknowledge that I have crew members who cannot do 2 1000m efforts in series. Especially when done at 37 to 41 spm. Also, we clearly should have rowed better in the final 300m, instead of just everyone pulling hard without coordination.

Romana, the girls and I took the 9pm train from Prague to Pardubice, where we spent the night. Today was basically getting home, taking the train from Pardubice to Brno, then some groceries and now I am firing up the barbecue. My training of today consisted of a bike ride to the supermarket.

Left work early and picked up the trailer, Romana and Robin at the rowing club. Our older children Lenka and Dominik would travel with the club bus.

Hodonín is a one hour drive south-east of Brno (70km). We arrived around 5pm and unloaded the trailer. Romana and I went out on the double. A short, 8km row on the river Morava.

Even though the river flow was minimal, there was a distinct pace difference between the upstream and downstream parts. The stroke rate variations around 0:35 are actually technique exercises.

Saturday

No races for me on Saturday, so I went out for a nice row on the single. The river is actually the border river between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As an internal border in the EU Schengen area, that doesn’t mean much, but still it fascinates me to row on “international waters”. The left bank being Slovak and the right bank Czech, I wondered which country’s rescue forces would come rescue me in case I needed to be rescued. Here’s a quick picture I took at the turn-around point. The left-hand side is Slovakia. The right-hand side the Czech Republic.

It was also nice to row on a river. A very welcome change of menu. The dead trees along the river are quite dangerous, though. Quite easy to run unto them …

On the way back I met my daughter Lenka in her girl’s quad. I did a few starts next to them.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out on the Hodonín rowing club, helping out various crews and watching the races.

I think I fell in love with the Hodonín rowing club house. Here are a few pictures.

It’s a lovely functionalist building from the pre-war era, when rowing was still an elite sport. Many interior details survived. The area behind the balcony has recently been renovated into a nice restaurant.

At the end of the day I coxed Romana’s Masters Ladies eight. That was a nice experience. The girls didn’t have a cox, so I volunteered, mentioning that I have successfully passed both coxing exams of my native club R&ZV Naarden.

I didn’t mention that the last time I coxed an eight was in 1986 or 1987.

It was great to cox. The races are on a river bend, and there are lanes marked by buoys in the turns. You have to pass on the right side of your lane’s buoy or risk being disqualified. So it was quite challenging to cox an eight at full (Masters ladies) speed. Still I managed to cheer for them, and after the row I got compliments from the bow four that they could hear me loud and clear (without using a cox box). We finished 3rd of 3, unfortunately. Around the 500m mark the rowing started to fall apart. A clear case of lack of winter training.

In the evening there was a nice party with local wine and traditional music from the region. We left around 11pm when Robin was falling asleep on the porch of the lovely club house, but some of the participants stayed up until 3am.

Sunday

Race day.

9:30 mM 1x

First race was the Masters 1x. A year ago I won here, so I was the title defender. This time there were many more masters scullers, so there were three races of four lanes. I was in the first race with two masters B rowers and one other masters C rower, my friend Kazimir from Hodonín. I was nervous. Kazi used to beat me and on a good day he can still beat me. He was not rowing his own boat, though, because two weeks ago he rowed into a dead tree trunk at full speed. Another serious contender was Mr Polasek from Olomouc. Mr Polasek is 42 years old, former national team member, and a very athletic looking guy. He has about 15kg more than I and these 15kg come in the form of length and muscle.

On top of all I was rowing in lane 4, the outer bend. Granted, they give you a few meters benefit at the start, but you have to round the buoys on the right side, which means that I would be rowing on the Slovak bank, while Kazi and Mr Polasek would be in the middle of the river, the place of maximum current.

The usual banter at the start. Then we aligned and got started. I started well and was leading. Kazi and the guy in lane 4 fell behind quickly, but Mr Polasek in lane 2 stayed too close. In the big turn he rowed past me and in the end he beat me by 10 seconds.

On the positive side, Mr Polasek was breathing heavily and had to work hard to win. On the negative side, I was not pleased that I let the stroke rate drop to 29spm in the second 500m of this row. My time was (a downstream) 3:37.

12:04 mM 2x

The next discipline was the Masters double. There were nine boats registered and it was quite difficult to create three good races with those nine crews. I know what I am talking about because while I was having a coffee on the balcony of that (lovely) club house, one of the referees came to me and we divided the line-up in three races together. We created a race of three of the weaker boats and two races where at least two boats were of equal strength, on paper. We slightly ignored the age categories, but I think this was allowed in this case. These are informal races and the idea is really to have interesting races for every participant.

My double was up against a strong boat from Ostrava. These gents are 10 years older than I but they are both training hard and they are hard to beat.

We noticed that.

Rowing in lane 2 we started off well but fell behind and didn’t manage to pass our competitors in lane 3 in the big turn. We rowed into a referee’s motor boat wake and didn’t handle it well. Combined with some minor steering mistakes and my rowing partner who was struggling to push hard in the second half. We finished three seconds behind the winner in second place. Our time was 3:14. Good for a second place in the other “fast” race.

I recorded this row on the Garmin Forerunner only, so now stroke rate data.

14:40 Mix 8+

After that I spent some time getting the double and my single ready for transport. During that, Romana and I got asked for the Masters Mix 8+. The local club trains in this discipline once per week, and they challenged the other participants to form a Mix 8+ to race against them.

Our Mix 8+ consisted of the double who beat us, a few guys from some of the other doubles, and 4 trainers (including Romana) from four rowing clubs.

We rowed our old eight, a wooden Karlisch. Don’t move the footstretchers on this boat, because you may be able to untighten a screw that you will never be able to tighten again. This boat also has a nice feature that the wood absorbs the strength of your stroke by the deformations of it’s hull. It is heavy to get up to speed, but being such a heavy boat it is unstoppable once up to speed.

So our improvised eight had 1km of training together when we lined up against the locals. Our start was the worse than any of the two practice starts but we somehow got up to speed. Our stroke was stroking a low stroke rate on request of the ladies, and in the first 200m we had difficulty fending off the attacks of the local mixed eight. After that our old Karlisch was going it’s cruising speed and we were rowing safely in front of the other eight. We won by about 10 seconds.

Perhaps this was the last year they put out this challenge.

Overall a good racing weekend. Not as many wins as last year, but to be honest the performance was as realistically expected, given the strength of our opponents.

Other significant races

Lenka and Iva won their heat and came second in the final in the double.

They also made it to the finals in the quad and came second after a very strong boat. Romana is trying to keep this quad together, but of course the trainers of that “strong” boat are looking at “our” strongest girls to make an even better quad for the National Championships. There were some interesting behind-the-scenes moves and the fact that all these 15/16 year old girls are “friends” on Facebook didn’t help. We’ll see how it pans out in the coming week.

Dominik and his partner Stepan rowed a very good race in the boys 11 year old double. They were second with a bow ball difference from the first boat. The nice thing was they were able to almost win after being quite far behind 200m before the finish line. (This age category races over 500m.)

After lunch we drove to Piestany, which took us nearly three hours, mainly because I wanted to try a different route, which was shorter and more scenic. It took us through the beautiful White Carpathian mountains, some very remote small towns, and a place where they were repairing the road and we had to wait about 15 minutes for a red traffic light.

Anyway, we couldn’t go training because even though our boats had arrived, our wing riggers where in a different minivan which would only arrive in the evening. We were staying in a hotel, but our son Dominik wanted to stay with his double partner in a tent. We let them build it themselves, and they managed! Also the girls double was relaxing.

Day 1 (Saturday)

We stayed in a hotel about 2.5km from the race course and bikes were included in the package. So after a nice breakfast we cycled to the race track. There I realized that one of our juniors had asked if he could use my boat for his singles races. (We couldn’t fit more boats on the trailer.) So I had to cycle back to the hotel to get the sliding seat. All well, he tried out the boat and I took a few shots of the pre-race atmosphere.

Our girls 13/14 was warming up for their race when one of the girls had an accident and somehow dislocated her knee. Ouch! She managed to put her knee back herself but was in great pain. While her trainer was comforting her, I speeded to the first aid station to get assistance. The medic looked at it and advised us to take her to the hospital, just to be sure. I got up to the restaurant to get some ice, then I hopped on the bike again, rode back to the hotel, got my car, and the girl, her trainer and I went to visit the local hospital. The doctor there did a thorough investigation and concluded that there was no damage, and that no immediate treatment was necessary, except cooling and some pain relief.

I am thinking of getting a beacon light to put on my car for these missions.

Because of the hospital episode I completely missed my son’s race in the single. He came in fourth place and was very disturbed that he didn’t come third and get a medal, like a year ago. His friend Stepan rowed in a slower heat and fetched a bronze medal with a time of 2:23.

Then our first Masters team got ready to race. In a big fight they managed to get first place in the coxless four. They didn’t know the result until I went to ask at the finish tower and then went to tell them. This is how they looked when I broke the news:

Happy CVK Brno Masters rowers

Then we rigged this boat for a quad and in the mean time I saw my daughter finish first in her heat in the girls 15/16 double. It looked really easy. The girls were leading by several lengths and rowing really well. That looked good for the final on Sunday, even though there were at least two equivalent (or perhaps slightly better) boats in the other heat. Also in the mean time, Dominik and Stepan in the double got swamped by a launch wake when they waited for the start. Their boat basically disappeared under a big wave, then reappeared, and then two 10/11 year old boys frantically tried to remove water from their boat. They rowed to a disappointing fourth place which put them in the B final for Sunday.

Masters Quad

Time for the Masters quad, which I stroked. Our biggest opponent, a composite with 2 fast rowers from Vienna, had withdrawn. The Vienna guys couldn’t be on the races on Saturday and would only participate in the Sunday events. Our only opponent left was a local quad from Piestany. We did our best not to underestimate them but it was hard.

The weather had changed from windstill to a pretty stiff tailwind.

We didn’t have a good start but by the second full stroke we were leading by a length. After 5 strokes we were leading by two lengths. After that I rated down and we finished the race in 60-70% effort.

Hurray! First medal of the weekend.

Masters 8+

This was a tougher one. Our quad was complemented by 2 other guys from our club who had trained less, and two rowers from other clubs. I was rowing bow seat. Still, for a change, I felt quite comfortable in this eight. Technique wise there was nothing to be said. The boat was stable and I was able to pull long strokes.

A year ago we had won this by a bow ball. This year’s race was a repetition of last year’s. Our opponents were the local masters eight from Piestany and a boat from Bratislava.

Our race plan was featured a faster second half, so we weren’t too worried when we were a bit behind Bratislava out of the starting blocks. I was becoming worried when, after 250m, their lead had increased to a length, and by 500m to a length and a half. Piestany was far behind.

Indeed, in the second half of the race we started to decrease the gap but it was not enough. We rated up, and then we rated up some more, but that also made the length disappear from the stroke.

Family Double

Only an hour after that it was time for the “family double”. I competed in the “Father and offspring” category, rowing with my daughter Lenka. In contrast to what the official results say, this was a 500m sprint. I really wanted to win this, but we would have strong competition from Mr Brazda and his daughter.

Lenka made me wear a pink sun shield and she wore a matching one, so we looked really cool. 🙂

Out of the start, the Brazdas were leading but we battled our way back by stroking high rate, very determined first 10 strokes. The reports from the bank say that we were rowing very well technically, that Lenka and I looked very much in sync. And yes, we managed to increase our gap to a length. By half way everything was really hurting. I was rowing these races “unplugged”. No stroke coach, no crewnerd, no Heart rate belt. I think we were rating 35 or 36 spm but we had to.

I was counting strokes now, hoping Lenka and I could manage another 30 of these … From her breathing I could hear she was in trouble too.

In the final 100m, the Brazda double fell a bit further behind so that made it a little easier. First place, hurray!

Two medals out of three races. One a very easy win, not really a race, but the other a very intense 500m sprint.